WBKR NASCAR Preview: Quicken Loans 400 

For the second time in a row, drivers face a repaved track and for the second week in a row, NASCAR drivers and teams arrived at the speedway two days early for a test session. Cars took to the Michigan International Speedway on Thursday for the first of the week’s 2 test sessions. Mark Martin led the morning test session with a speed of 201.089 MPH while Tony Stewart led the afternoon session with the fastest speed of the day, 201. 896 MPH. Like last week’s venue at Pocono, the Michigan track over gone a repaving during the off-season.

Brad Keslowski told Fox News Radio, “It’s certaionly the fastest track on the circuit right now”.

The first NASCAR race held at the 2.0 mile Michigan was on June 15, 1967. Since that race, there have been 85 events at the speedway nestled in the Irish Hills of Michigan. Michigan is a track that in the past has had multiple racing grooves, thus, track position is very important. It’s hard for drivers to gain on the leader because the race is known to have long green flag runs. Michigan has also had a past history of being a fuel mileage race. During the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Ford had the best fuel mileage in the garage. This could be a reason why Jack Roush’s teams have eleven wins at the track. While Denny Hamlin will try a third straight win, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., whose last win came at Michigan in 2008, is my pick for victory lane this weekend!

As mentioned in last week’s article, Kurt Busch was put in NASCAR’s version of “time out” after a verbal outburst toward a media member at Dover. Busch’s suspension has been lifted and he will return to the #51 Phoenix Racing entry this weekend. Busch made headlines earlier in the season when he drove a Talladega Nights themed car at Talladega Superspeedway. Since that event, Phoenix racing was contacted by The Jerry Springer Show to possibly sponsor the controversial Busch in racing events this season.

Tune into WBKR’s coverage of the Quicken Loans 400 beginning at 11AM on WBKR and WBKR.com!

 Moon Mullins and Blake Smith

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